I once sat on a committee of a London charity, “New Horizons” with Lord Longford  and Jack Profumo. Over lunch, Longford asked me for my motives. I stumbled a reply and said they were mixed. He said, “May I give you some advice? As he was paying for the lunch, I could hardly say “no”.

“We all have mixed motives in everything we do,” he said, “may I suggest you just shut up  get on with it.”

Why did I start ZANE? What were my motives? Mark Twain wrote: “There are two important days in our lives: the day we are born and the day we find out why we were born.”

Perhaps I was born to start ZANE.

My friend Jim Pringle claims that occasionally people are “anointed” to some work or other. Some to “big” works, for example, William Booth  (the Sallies), Chuck Colston (Prison Fellowship), John Stott, Tim Keller and many others. And when they die the work alters of course in other hands, and continues but in a different way.

And smaller works? Jim reckons I was anointed to start ZANE and all those who work in the charity have been “anointed” as well; in fact anointed  by God to do the work planned for us to do before the world began (Ephesians 2 v 10). So boasting is ludicrous. It’s an enormous privilege.

And my motives? Perhaps I should just shut up and  get on with it.

Dragons Lurk Here

Sex, money and power are addictive and… potentially packed with sin.

When I was young, it was another world. You could only access smutty literature, or the occasional picture of half-dressed women from the likes of Health and Efficiency magazine, by chance. Of course, there was Page 3 in The Sun, and at a stretch, we could buy harder stuff in Soho and carry it home in a brown paper bag. Such were the days of innocence.

Then came Playboy, Hugh Hefner’s slippery slope of “one-handed” literature, with an ever-thinner veneer of respectability.

Unstoppable Tide

They used to call it “adult” pictures. In truth, there’s nothing adult about it – it’s adolescent. But it’s catastrophically destructive all the same.

With, the advent of the internet, the roof caved in and the floor collapsed. Now, children can gain access to the dystopian world of Sodom and Gomorrah with a single click – and gaze at unlimited quantities of hard-core pornography.

Of course, the pimps try to squeeze subscriptions out of idiot punters, but much is available for free in eye-watering, gynaecological detail. Apparently, more than half of today’s 12-year-olds have been exposed to pornography. And what do they see? Women being routinely humiliated, objectified, dehumanised, assaulted and tortured. The women are real, as is the violence. The suffering is eroticised – and of course, this coarsens viewers and dehumanises participants. Nothing can stem the tide – as King Canute famously showed, some forces simply can’t be commanded.

Pornography is addictive and, as the iron laws of unintended consequences kick in, we can see the escalation of male impotence and the inability to maintain “normal” sexual relations. Young women are asked to perform bizarre sexual acts, and sex crimes are rising. It’s all vastly damaging with no pluses at all – except to the profiteers.      

It has nothing to do with a lack of education. As we recently saw in France, Giselle Pelicot was drugged and raped by a trail of more than 50 men ­– but what happened to her had nothing to do with ignorance. Some of the men on trial were graduates. All, presumably, understood that consent is imperative – sex education is compulsory in French schools – yet they charged on anyway. 

Why? Precisely because the rapists knew exactly what they were doing – that’s the point. The driving force behind rape and sexual assault is pornography, which drags (mostly) men into a bottomless swamp of degradation. The Pelicot case amply exposes the mainspring of the porn industry – the monetisation of taboo.

The Unscratchable Itch

Researcher Sean Thomas writes, “The whole, vast, metastasising, $100bn sewer isn’t selling sex, rather it’s selling transgression. The dopamine hit that drags men (it’s nearly always men) back to their laptops time after time is the result of breaking a taboo, and that’s why it’s transgressive. Once a taboo is normalised, it loses its transgressive power. So, men seek another and another more extreme way to transgress. And so, the spiral can end in rape.”

Male sexuality is designed by evolution to be an unscratchable itch, a desperate, unsatisfiable urge. It’s like hunger – you aren’t meant to wake up one day and think, “Okay, I’ve had 6,000 meals, so I think I’ll stop eating now.” Nor do men wake up and think, “I’ve viewed 500 sex acts – so I’ll stop staring now.” And the danger here is that when a man starts to explore his more deviant sexual fantasies, he finds himself chasing ever weirder varieties of sex.

And where are the vigilantes policing whether the women involved – and some of them children – have been trafficked? If they can catch Jeffrey Epstein, why can’t they catch the hundreds of pimps feeding this disgusting industry?   

Beware! We must warn the young, for dragons lurk here. This will, and can, destroy you.

I’m glad I’m not young anymore.

A lovely fresh breeze and a sunny day; we were accompanied by two delightful supporters from Maidstone, a retired journalist and his insightful wife. We had a far ranging conversation and they were both well read and as sharp as tacks. I was reminded of the aphorism, it’s hard to get an intelligent person to change their mind but impossible if they are stupid. All ZANE supporters are of course, by definition, intelligent but, in case there is one  who has slipped through the net, there are various topics I choose not to write about because they are toxic; after all I am in the business of writing on everyday subjects as an entertainment, and I try not to irritate. So I avoid abortion, Brexit, assisted dying and Gaza. But as an exception to my rule, I will say something about Gaza.

There was a priest and a rabbi who died and went to Heaven. As a tradition, all holy people are allowed a meeting with God. At the end of the meeting, they were allowed a question.

“Please tell us O God, if there ever will be a resolution to the Israeli/Palestine affair?

“Yes, of course, answered God, “but not in my lifetime,”

And that’s as far as I will go – and I was told that story by a Jewish friend. I might add that I have a couple of events in my life that I challenge anyone to emulate. I was once kissed by Yassar Arafat and hugged by Mother Teresa, so beat that if you can. I should add that my reactions with Arafat were entirely temporary and do not affect my views on the tragic conflict, which I am keeping to myself.

What’s in a Name?

The liberal consensus welcomes the cancellation of those whose backgrounds fail to fit with contemporary sensibilities. So, Rhodes must fall and Edward Colston’s statue was hurled into Bristol Harbour. The CoE now prays about statues of unsuitable luminaries with slavery connections.

No modern liberal can afford to be linked with an institution that commemorates people with a problematic background. However, there is one exception. In a quiet church graveyard on the Welsh border – St Giles’, Wrexham – lies the grave of an extraordinary old rogue.

The Rogue Behind the Ivy

The man in question was born in 1649, three decades after the Mayflower arrived in America. As a young man he loathed Puritanism, so he took a job with the East India Company and went to India. As he had no morals or principles, he made a pile of money and ended up as governor of Madras. He maintained several mistresses and enriched himself through smuggling and every kind of crooked practice. One wheeze was to pass a law requiring every European ship to carry a minimum of 10 slaves for sale. He sold them at a huge mark-up – in 1687 alone, he arranged for 655 to be sent on their way. He met the burgeoning demand for slaves by having children kidnapped – and even had his groom hanged for taking two days off without permission.

Even the East India Company eventually lost patience with him. In 1699, after it was discovered that he had been embezzling company funds to purchase land for himself, he was banished to England. He brought back so much loot it couldn’t fit into his two houses, one in London, the other in Wrexham. He became England’s first auctioneer so he could flog off the surplus stuff. It took seven auctions to get rid of several hundred snuff boxes, 500 rings, 7,000 paintings and 116 pairs of cufflinks.

This character had some tenuous links to America, and, in a fit of absentmindedness, gave a minute fraction of his wealth to an obscure college in Saybrook, Connecticut. Later the college asked for more funds, so he sent 417 books and a picture of King George I.

To honour their donor, the new college renamed itself after him and hung his portrait in the hall. It shows him being waited on by a Black servant wearing a metal collar.

Despite that, the college – now a university – still bears the name of this whoring, thieving, slave-trading old monster who gave it a few books. So, let’s applaud Elihu Yale, whose name graces the university from which Bill Clinton and both George Bushes graduated.

Under Watered

I felt below par at the outset of today’s walk. What could it be? Then I wondered if I was becoming dehydrated. It’s easy to underestimate the amount of water needed in warm weather when walking long distances.

I redoubled my water intake and feel better.

Totting Up While Tottering Along

I have totted up a rough calculation of the work ZANE has undertaken in Zimbabwe over the past twenty years.

We have always looked after pensioners and veterans in homes and living by themselves and it numbers over ten thousand. Then there are six and half thousand treatments to correct child clubfoot that’s children who can now live normal lives as opposed to living in the shadows. . Thousands have benefited from our medical aid programme. Many thousand veterans across the Commonwealth now have access to two meals a day. The pop-up classes in the slums of Harare have been a great success. ZANE has brought relief to sufferers of cholera and political violence. A few years back we assisted the embassy deliver necessary medicines in the COVID scare.

It’s quite a story, all due to ZANE’s amazing teams.

And all worth walking for.

A Grumble (with Gratitude)

Some things in today’s world just get on my nerves! Here’s a grumble through the ghastly, the baffling and the just plain naff…

Things I Find Naff

• Men with Windsor knots.
• Calls to utilities that put me on endless hold, tell me my call’s important, then play ghastly music as a consolation.
• The question, “Red or white?”
• Comb-overs.
• Halitosis so strong it could be used to club a baby seal (amazingly common).
• Vicars wading into politics during sermons (often on subjects they know tiddly squat about and which have nothing to do with salvation) and saying “er” and “um” relentlessly.
• People telling me about the problems in Zimbabwe, as if they were new to me.
• Short socks.
• Politicians squawking at times of disaster, “Our hearts go out to the victims.”
• Being told, “No worries” or “Have a nice day!”
• My call being answered by someone whose accent is so impenetrable I cannot understand a word.
• Piped music in restaurants.
• Electric cars.
• People who encourage me to “enjoy” when food is served.
• Waiters who interrupt a meal to ask if everything is all right (I’d tell them if it wasn’t).
• Face masks.
• T-shirts with slogans.
• Fat men in shorts.
• “Smart casual” as a dress code.
• Tattoos and face piercings.
• Online petitions.
• Walking around with a water bottle.
• “Elf and safety”.

Things I Miss

• Petrol attendants.
• Train journeys with dining cars, tables, white cloths, menus and a waiter.
• Cinemas with usherettes selling choc ices in the interval.
• Walking unsearched onto a plane.
• Coal fires.
• Parking for free anywhere.
• Robinson Lemon Barley Water.
• Crisps with small blue packets of salt.

Things I’m Grateful For

• Jet travel.
• Showers (no one had them in 1950s England).
• Frozen peas.
• Kitchen foil.
• Mangoes and avocadoes in UK shops.
• Jeans, shorts and slip-on shoes.
• Modern medicine and dentistry (not the bills for the latter!)
• Interflora.

We are now half way through the walk.

Jane and I are to visit Zimbabwe in a couple of weeks. In many ways, it will be a sad occasion as we will be saying farewell to three loyal and dedicated servants of ZANE who are retiring after 20 years of service. We never reveal the names of our workers, but those leaving have enabled many thousands of the elderly to face retirement with sufficient food, money, medicines and love instead of penury and despair.

Many of those ZANE workers have been privileged to assist were WW2 veterans and  their widows. In the main they have  died – apart from widows. But many others have taken their place. Often their children have emigrated and their aged parents left behind were too proud  to admit their savings had been destroyed by bouts of inflation and they were totally  desperate.  That’s where ZANE has a proud role and we couldn’t have achieved what we have done without our brave team.

So it will be a bitter/sweet occasion. But I am hope those who are  retiring will never forget what they have achieved and the crucial role they have played in the lives of so many.

Running on Empty

Google tells me that around one in five young people in the UK are suffering from some form of mental health condition. 

The reason for much of this seems obvious. It’s not that we’re hungry for fame, comfort, wealth or power – these things generate almost as many problems as they solve. The core problem is the lack of meaning – the senselessness and emptiness of so many lives. It is the general neurosis of our time.

Our souls are hungry for meaning – for the sense that the world will be a little bit different for our having passed through it. If we feel we are merely existing rather than living, or that our leisure time has been drained away staring at a screen, then we might just as well never have been here.

The American Declaration of Independence offers everyone the right to pursue happiness. However, because it’s a political document rather than a religious one, it doesn’t warn of the frustrations involved in trying to exercise that right. You don’t become happy by pursuing happiness, but by living a life that means something. The happiest people I know are not the richest or the most famous. They are those who work at being kind, helpful and reliable – and happiness sneaks into their lives while they are busy doing those things.

Happiness is always a by-product, never a primary goal. It’s like a butterfly – the more you pursue it, the faster it flits out of sight. So, stop chasing and busy yourself with productive things – and happiness will sneak up and perch on your shoulder. 

Like, whatever…

I am indebted to Miles Morland for introducing me to some really bad analogies written by American high school students:

• He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree
• She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
• The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
• She had a deep throaty laugh – like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
• John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
• Her vocabulary was as bad as like, whatever.
• The revelation that his marriage of years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock – like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

Our guest walker is an eminent judge who spent part if his early youth in the British South Africa Police and based in Rhodesia.. We spent a happy time talking about the old days.

I thought the walk would be too much for him, but we were plain wrong. At the day’s end, we walked through at least half a mile of rotting rubbish crowned by a sinking dead rat. What squalid people humankind can be.

Diary of a Disgruntled Cat

Once again, Kariba the moggy has spoken…

You keep feeding me new types of cat food without even checking if I like them. Well, here’s the feedback.

Whiskas with chicken? It’s okay… occasionally – but please, not every darn day!

Sifilaccetti Succulent Grill – what a daft name for cat food! Also, I see the packaging the muck comes in carries a picture of a peculiar looking cat – frankly, it looks like a moron to me, where on earth is it from? I presume its weird colouring is meant to reflect our inclusive society, foisted upon us cats without so much as a miaow of consent! Please don’t think I’m racist, but foreign cats are routinely smuggled into the UK in people’s handbags, and most are feral. All they want to do is fight, steal and spray on the curtains!

But, back to food. I prefer Purina Gourmet, except it’s got a picture of a white cat on the front – its either a ghost or its hair’s been dyed. Dead common! I’ll bet its name is Sharlene or something equally naff.

Everyone says I’m ancient for a moggy, but because of excellent vet care, 17 is the new 10 – so there’s plenty of life in old Kariba yet. However, without being too explicit, I can’t get any tomcat to even glance at me – despite me having some catty tricks that would make their whiskas stand on end! Typical tomcats, they’re too focused on chasing pussy crumpet.

So, it’s back to memory lane and all the positions in the “Catty Sutra” I used to enjoy. Those were the days!          

Oh yes, please do keep your children’s sodding dogs under control. Suffice to say, they’re still more “poo” than “cocker”. I know I said this last year, but your thoughtless children have bought yet another one, so the insult needs repeating.

Yours truly,

Kariba

Doctor’s Orders

Reported in the Mail is the story of Lady Dworkin, who, after experiencing difficulties conceiving, underwent a course of IVF treatment.

She wanted confirmation of the best time to have sexual intercourse, so she rang the clinic to ask, “Is it better first thing in the morning or last thing at night?”

“I think both are best – in the early morning and last thing at night,” came the reply.

“Oh, thanks,” answered the good lady. “And please, for my records, which doctor are you?”

There was a slight hesitation. “I’m not a doctor, I’m the decorator.”     

London Calling

However useless – or not – Sadiq Khan may be, the city he oversees remains a pre-eminent global powerhouse. Where else can compete?

All America’s cities are on the slide, with New York, Chicago and San Francisco shuddering under record levels of crime and vacant office space. Paris is bedevilled by ethnic ghettos, while other great European cities are provincial when compared to London.

Singapore and Dubai have overbearing governments, Mumbai and Delhi are choked with pollution. The huge Asian cities aren’t cosmopolitan enough – all remain insular, have few migrants and are unwelcoming to outsiders.

Okay, it goes without saying there is crime in London, but it has fallen this century. Of course, Brexit was meant to have turned London into a tertiary player. Sorry to argue with Alastair Campbell, but since 2016, finance giants Bloomberg and Citadel have moved in while Google has built a massive new headquarters at King’s Cross. Microsoft has announced plans to open a London AI office and Apple has made five floors of the renovated Battersea Power Station its European headquarters. 

Ambitious immigrants are attracted to the proximity of world-class universities. In fact, immigration is lifting the performance of London’s state schools above the national average.

What explains this success? London’s old advantage is its status as a former imperial capital, which has welcomed the world for centuries. As Ford Madox Ford wrote in 1905, “London is the world town.”

A Few Observations…

If you can’t laugh at yourself, don’t worry. Others will do it for you.

It’s difficult to make an intelligent person change their mind – and it’s impossible with a stupid one.

Uber liberals think that all “normal” people must agree with them and gasp with outrage when they find out this is not the case – as with Brexit and Trump. Conservatives, on the other hand, are always surprised to find that anyone shares their views – as with Brexit and Trump.

A day-long train journey is always preferable to a one-hour flight.

Io non c’ero, e se c’ero dormivo is a useful Italian saying that means, “I wasn’t there, and if I was there, I was sleeping.” 

A long walk in a hot sun. Is there a bush or a hedge in Kent that is not nursing a rotting fast food container or an old beer can? All to the shame of the Kent local authority.

Rayner Clouds

“High flying adored”. Am I the only Tory sad to see the end of Angela Rayner – Labour’s Evita? I know she is getting what she asked for, and she is a hypocrite and all the rest. But… she added a touch of “chutzpah” and glamour to a boring collection of grey-suits on all sides of the Commons. So I, for one, am sorry to see her go in such a devastatingly final way, for, as I see it, there is unlikely to be a path back.

And I hate all the lip-smacking glee at her downfall. What a horrid profession.

The Right to Be Wrong

ZANE supporters congratulate me on my “bravery” in writing about subjects they have been bullied into thinking are somehow “off limits”.

A new consensus appears to have emerged: truth is no longer a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy known to only a few enlightened people whose job it is to inform everyone else. A few examples: “Trump is a unique danger to the world”; “Out of the EU, the UK is bound to fail”; and “Israel is always in the wrong”. 

Over a long life, I have concluded that just because an opinion is widely held is no evidence whatsoever that it is not utterly absurd – in fact, in view of the silliness of most of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible. To quote Ibsen, “The majority is always wrong.” 

Unfiltered Thoughts

We should all be allowed to express our opinions on anything we like – so let me parade a few. Former US Marine Michael Hopf wrote, “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times; good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” Do you agree? In England, “mentally challenged” people are required to signal their disability by wearing a baseball cap back to front. What do you think of that? And the world is egg-shaped (it is slightly, so there!)

And now to the more contentious:

– Hunting foxes is huge and harmless fun, and the ban was a mean-spirited abomination to pay back the Tories for the closing of the coal mines. The new laws led to the collapse of valuable countryside communities, and many good people had their lives devastated. Certainly, the ban was not for the benefit of foxes, who are today shot or often cruelly wounded or poisoned.

– New cars are a scam. 

– England should be applauded for abolishing slavery.

– Labour will soon run out of other people’s money.

– Flanders and Swann understated things when they sang, “England is best, England is best, I couldn’t give tuppence for all of the rest.”    

If you don’t agree with some (or any) of these views – which is your right – then perhaps they may persuade you to re-evaluate your own. What’s shocking, at least in the Anglosphere, is the shutting down of our ability to say anything that does not agree with the received opinion of the Blob (the people at – among others – the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Financial Times, CNN, Oxbridge and Harvard).

I quote the late, great Christopher Hitchens: “My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.”

Ol’ Man River

Some of our beloved friends are gravely ill, perhaps dying. We try to send messages that are a comfort and not mere clichés – but when the world suddenly turns upside down on a sixpence, the shock can be profound. Yet the roaring world hardly notices, and like Ol’ Man River, it just keeps rolling along.

I read a heartfelt comment on a memorial sheet, “To the world he was just a man; to me he was the world.” 

Then we read of the preoccupation that others feel when someone they don’t know well suffers or dies.

In his poem “Musée des Beaux Arts”, WH Auden writes of Icarus after his wax wings melt:

“…and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”

Then comes grief. In the TV series The Crown, Prince Philip speaks of the loss of his sister in a plane crash: “I learnt then what grief was. True grief. How it moves in the body, how it inhabits it. How it becomes part of your skin, your cells. And it makes a home there, a permanent home, but you learn to live with it… And you will be happy again but never in the same way as before. That’s the point – to keep finding new ways.”

The Best Things in Life

Still, amid the indifferent rhythm of the world, there are plenty of moments that pierce the grey. Here’s a personal list:

• The scan that says “clear”.
• Winter sunshine through a lifting mist.
• Sitting next to a log fire, listening to the teeming rain outside.
• Being with the family.
• Watching Jane asleep.
• Kariba the cat waking me up by headbutting.
• Listening to the massed pipes and drums of the Highland Brigade.
• Attending a play where our grandchildren are performing.
• Watching our children taking church services.
• A meal with friends.
• Most Shakespeare plays at Stratford.
• A dozen oysters, Worcester sauce and lemon.
• Doing anything with the family.
• The smell of wet dogs and horses.
• The poems of, WH Auden, WB Yeats, Edna St Vincent Millay, TS Eliot and a few others.
• Verdi operas.
• The ballet Giselle.
• Reading the Spectator.
• Realising how lucky we are.

We left Gillingham and ended up in the village of Upchurch., The weather was a mix of violent rain and blue skies. But it was a good walk with lunch in The Crown and tended by delightful Cheryl with a megawatt smile and a bubbling personality to match.

Compassionate Clarification

I read in The times yet another Bishop is berating Farage for not being “compassionate” in his views on immigration.

“Compassionate “ is an overworked word. There is no such thing as a ‘compassionate” politician when he or she is performing his or her public role. Anyone can be “compassionate” spraying around other people’s money. Let me explain further. The Good Samaritan was being compassionate when he assisted the traveller beaten by robbers, for that was his private initiative out of the goodness of his heart. However if Caesar had decreed that the Samaritan should help him and paid him to do so, then the man was merely doing his job. It’s not Farage’s job – or that of any politician – to be “compassionate”. Their job is to win votes and get elected.

And bishops would be wise to steer clear of emotive topics for they are vastly complex.

For example, what may be compassionate to the immigrant in providing them with a house may well infuriate the UK taxpayer, who not only has to pick up the bill but also finds that there are insufficient houses left for them and their family. It’s a question that needs an answer: Do politicians assist immigrants first or the UK voters who put them in office?

It’s the politicians who have to grapple with this, not the bishops.

First-World Whinging

Dear ZANE supporter, aren’t we a lucky lot?  Yes, I know all about the cost of living, the awfulness of the present government, illegal immigrants, the difficulties facing the wife and kids, and our inability to get an Uber on a rainy day.

But we must count our blessings… Look around, and you’ll see some of the luckiest people in the world, living their best lives in a stable country. The reason immigrants are streaming into the UK is because they reckon it’s the place to be. None of us are short of food, healthcare or housing. None of our young have been corralled into uniform and sent off to war to kill strangers – like our grandparents were.

Most of us have enough money, and can go where we like, when we like. We can take nice holidays, have access to lifesaving medicines and live in pleasant enough places. Our courts are fair, and we have freedom of speech – and where this is in question, we can campaign without fear of imprisonment. Our political system is not corrupt, and our police do not shoot first and ask questions second or torture us. The rubbish is collected, and houses are being built.

Lighten Up

I visited my grandfather’s grave the other day – he died of a ruptured appendix in 1893. That night, I dreamt he asked me, “How is life today?” I told him we haven’t had a world war in my lifetime – and about the relief of poverty, our present social services, universal pensions, the NHS and much more.   

The old ghost sighed. “What lucky sods you all are, Tom!” he said quietly. “I doubt that anyone has ever had it as good as you do. How happy everyone must be!”

I laughed until tears poured down my face. “Happy? People do nothing but complain. They read the papers, watch TV and look at social media – and they find themselves submerged in a bog of misery, victimhood and “Oooh, isn’t it all awful!”

Dear friends. Lighten up, look around and have a laugh. Get a sense of proportion, read some history books and remember our bloody past. Be thankful you’re living in 2025 with up-to-date dentistry and hip replacement surgery.

Nothing matters very much, and most things don’t matter at all. I’ve learnt not to worry about things when I can’t affect the outcome. Nothing I can do will make the slightest difference to Israel, Netanyahu, Trump or even Starmer (until the next election, that is).

I expect the same applies to you but take a moment to reflect on your life over the past year and take a view of the outlook for the coming one. (Of course, I know some of you are facing real tragedy, and I send you a bear hug of sympathy.)

Delete Facebook and use both the Telegraph and the Guardian as cat litter. Deal?

Woozle

We assume, as a democracy, that our voters are intelligent – and that this collective wisdom will produce fairer laws than those inflicted on societies by dictators. However, Churchill disagreed, remarking, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

I have fought five elections – and even won some of them. Yet when I look back, it isn’t the rigours of intellectual debate that come to mind, but rather the story of the Woozle. Do you remember it? Winnie the Pooh was walking in the snow when he noticed tracks behind him. He grew fearful and became convinced he was being stalked by a Woozle. Soon, another set of tracks appeared and then there were two Woozles!

Of course, Christopher Robin spoiled things by pointing out Pooh was walking in circles. 

Round and round the government goes – and voters whirl in tandem.

Debt and Denial

When sober, former European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker once quipped, “We all know what to do to balance the nation’s books. The problem is that if we do it, we won’t get re-elected.”

This is why the manifestos at the last election were pure Woozle. We’ve run out of money and we’re deep in hock. Soon we’ll be unable to borrow money at any price. Already, our debt interest outstrips spending on defence and education. The lenders are watching.

Recall Greece and its debt crisis – the poorest were hit the hardest. Joblessness and despair soared, while the rich – as they always do – kept on building swimming pools. That’s what awaits us here. Instead of levelling with voters and launching a national survival campaign, what do our gutless governments offer voters? A quadruple lock for pensioners, no material cutbacks on ballooning social spending, fuel subsidies, and tax hikes on the wealthiest – who then bugger off out of the country.

The truth is voters don’t want reality. Politicians pretend that fairies lurk at the bottom of the garden, that there’s such thing as a bargain and that two and two can make five. Our baby voters demand more services yet lower taxes; more homes but not near them; cheap care homes but no more low-skilled immigration; new infrastructure but with their rights of veto intact.

As the promises inevitably fail, leaders come and go in quick succession: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer – here today and gone tomorrow. Others will follow and they too will fail to deliver. No one dares to explain to voters that the promises were always risible and that by voting for dummies, they have made themselves the authors of their own betrayal.

A poem by Stephen Crane:

“I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
‘It is futile,’ I said,
‘You can never –’
‘You lie,’ he cried,
And ran on.”

Where is today’s Christopher Robin? When it all finally unravels, it’ll be our turn to cry as we flee. And we will comfort ourselves with the excuse that no one ever warned us about the Woozle.

Playing the Long Game

When Pierre Monteux was appointed principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra at the age of 86, he insisted on a 25 year contract – with an option to renew at the end!

All the rain that failed to fall in the summer was blown on us in a series of gales. .
The tiny path led us by the side of where the Medway meets the Thames, and where both rivers meet the mud. The rain acted like a scattering of Vaseline on the cobbles so it was slow and tedious going.

Rochester is a beautiful city, yet the local authority should be ashamed that the roads are smothered in  a veneer of beer cans and litter: this ancient city needs a good scrub.  We walked  through Gillingham and in a suburb we discovered a street with a monopoly of Lebanese, Turkish, and Nigerian shops and full of what Starmer calls “strangers”. Jane and I rather liked it. Sad so many shops are shut and there are  so many nail bars and “casinos”;  the late cabinet minister (under Blair), Tessa Jowell,  had to admit that loosening the “gaming” laws was a catastrophe. The fact the UK is a world gambling centre is shaming with vast quantities of social security cash wickedly sucked from the pockets if those least able to pay.

One day our blinkers will fall away and we will decide that we really cannot go on allowing ghastly cars to pollute our country. They clog up our roads. The only vehicle I admire is a car crusher.

Bring It On!

If I call for an end to asylum, am I immediately condemned as a far-right bigot? If so, too bad. Bring it on!

We can no longer afford to allow absolutely anybody claiming persecution to enter the UK. Why are we granting all foreigners, often with manufactured sob stories, access to our expensive judicial, welfare and healthcare systems? These strangers have never contributed tuppence – and may never do so. For the developing world, the offer of such refuge is irresistible. For us, the poor sodding taxpayers, it’s simply ruinous.

Years ago, it was a wonderful idea that anyone facing persecution could find a safe haven. But that was then, and this is now – the past is a foreign country, and they do things differently there. Today, the system is riddled with corruption and has become a playbook for dodgy lawyers. All too often, those claiming “credible fear” of political persecution are economic migrants coached by smugglers or half-witted aid workers on what to tell the authorities to game the rules. As a result, we see mosques full of Muslims who’ve ostensibly converted to Christianity; platoons of young men from socially conservative countries who claim to be gay; and boatloads of heavily bearded men presenting themselves as teenagers.

Why do we remain committed to this farce? Why should the UK abdicate control over its borders? We see the effects of this in the courts. A Gazan family of six gained entry using rules designed to shelter Ukrainians. A Pakistani man imprisoned for rape was allowed to remain in the UK because deportation would be hard on his children – whom he’s forbidden to see without supervision since he’s a paedophile. A Nigerian woman, denied asylum nine times in a row, eventually won her case. Fancy! Nine attempts, all at our expense! How much did that nonsense cost?

Today, migrants in Scunthorpe email their chums in war-torn Congo about the lovely free hotel they’re living in courtesy of the Home Office. Can we really be surprised that people use small boats to get here? After we scrap this daft system, we can choose who is invited to live here. But perhaps countries like the UK – which saw its foreign-born population rise from nearly zero to 20 per cent in 20 years – could be seen as having already done their part. Droves of poorly educated, low-skilled arrivals are diluting social cohesion, increasing criminality, depressing GDP per capita and costing UK taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds each over their lifetimes. The government wants to be seen as nice and generous. Well, why can’t it be nice and generous to those of us who already live here – and who are obliged to pay the bills?

Thumb in Bum, Mind in Neutral

I never cease to wonder why so many people go to church. Since you ask, what do I mean?

Recently, at a local church, I heard a truly remarkable sermon. It was a summary of the reasons why we should believe in the resurrection – a key issue, of course, for if the resurrection didn’t occur, our faith collapses into candy floss thinking. The preacher was excellent, blending stories and humour – one of those rare speakers you absolutely must listen to. As ZANE supporters are aware, most preachers are dire, banging on about climate change, the dreadful State of Israel, foodbanks, slavery or some such tosh. So, last Sunday was an electric occasion, powerful and relevant. 

Afterwards, the congregation met for coffee and not a single person commented – not one. This must be heartbreaking for vicars. Preach your heart out, and week after week, all you get are blank, bovine faces staring back at you – without even the faintest glimmer of comprehension or interest!

I think that if Jesus appeared in person and gave the original rendering of the Sermon on the Mount, people would still just sit there wondering what’s for lunch.

Bright sunny morning, birds chirping, alls well with the world, we feel fine; the walk is going well…

We asked our walk creators to ensure we have no hills, no plough, and please no frightening roads…. and Bingo! Is this a hill? , No it can’t be, yes it darn well is, quite the longest hill we have staggered up in years…

Then a series of small, narrow,  winding roads; what do we do? All that has to happen is a genial half-wit to half glance at his messages as he or she zooms along and it’s good night, sweet Prince for us. Then through the gate and what do we see?  So we stagger swearing through miles of bloody plough. The triple whammy. Grrr!

However, the rest of the walk went well and I am in a forgiving vein.

A Little About Me

1. What is your idea of earthly happiness?

To love and be loved.

2. What are your main faults?

 Those that dictate my most urgent material needs.

3. Who are your heroes of fiction?

Horatio Hornblower; Flashman; Jeeves; Jean Valjean (Les Misérables); the King’s General (in du Maurier’s novel); Bathsheba Everdene; Richard Sharpe (particularly at Waterloo); Blaise Meredith (the priest in Morris West’s The Devil’s Advocate).

4. Who are your heroes of history?

First Division: General Sir Harry Smith and his wife Juana María de Los Dolores de León Smith (Peninsular War – google them); Thomas Paine; Socrates; Lord Cochrane; Stonewall Jackson; Ulysses S. Grant (commanding general and US president); Lawrence of Arabia; Rev. John Newton (former slaver, who wrote “Amazing Grace”); Blaise Pascal; William Wallace; Joan of Arc; Norman Tebbit.

Second Division:  John Masters DSO, OBE (soldier and novelist); George MacDonald Fraser OBE (soldier and author of Flashman amongst others); Frederic Manning (soldier and author of the Middle Parts of Fortune).

5. Which people have influenced you most (other than parents)?

Nancy Walters, Kwaku Boateng, Prebendary John Collins, Canon David MacInnes, James Pringle

6. Who are your favourite painters?

Caravaggio; Lucian Freud; Turner.

7. What are your most valued qualities in men and women?

Sense of humour; courage, moral and physical; sense of the absurd; kindness towards others in trouble.

8. What are you most proud of?

A long and loving marriage; passing out of RM Sandhurst; leading the revolt at Lloyd’s of London; the horse Jane and I bred, Prince Panache, winning the Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event, one of the world’s most prestigious events in the sport of eventing; establishing ZANE and a medical programme for veterans and pensioners; the happy marriages of our children; all our 11 grandchildren; the ordination of three of our children; the establishment of Jane’s Community Emergency Foodbank (CEF); our many cherished friends.

9. Who would you most like to have dinner with?

Saint Peter; Oscar Wilde; Cicero; Prometheus; Robert Burns; Oskar Schindler; Anne Boleyn; Lord Cochrane; Thomas Paine; Bill Clinton; Enoch Powell and Tony Benn (who were friends with each other).

10. What are your most valued qualities in friends?

Their continued existence – and their continued affection towards me.            

11. What are your greatest fears?

 Mental incapacity affecting both Jane and me; loss of love from family; loss of sense of humour.

12. Which public figures do you most despise?

Tony Blair; Robert Maxwell; Nicola Sturgeon; Ted Heath; Ed Miliband; Vladimir Putin; Eamon de Valera.

13. Which public figures do you most admire?

Oliver Cromwell; Golda Meir; Alexei Navalny; Volodymyr Zelensky; Vera Brittain; Lord Denning; Cardinal Basil Hume; Gordon Wilson (Irish draper who publicly forgave the IRA for killing his daughter); WW2 fighter pilots; WW2 naval Arctic convoy commanders; men who gave up their lifeboat seats to women and children on the Titanic; Father Maximilian Kolbe (priest at Auschwitz who sacrificed his life for another prisoner); Chidiock Tichborne (who wrote a famous poem before his execution); First World War poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon; Jane Austen; Kate Muir.

14. Who are your favourite poets?

ASJ Tessimond; Francis Thompson; Wilfred Owen; Robert Frost; Edna St. Vincent Millay; Wendy Cope; WH Auden; WB Yeats; TS Eliot.

15. What is your favourite poem?

“Stop all the Clocks” by WH Auden. The poems that make me cry (I have no real idea why) are “Uxbridge Road” by Evelyn Underhill, and “After Apple-Picking” and “The Death of the Hired Man” by Robert Frost.

16. What are your favourite books?

The Pensées by Pascal; A History of Napoleon’s Italian Campaign; The Stars Look Down by AJ Cronin; The Loving Spirit by Daphne du Maurier (in fact anything by her); White Fang by Jack London; The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E Nesbit.

17. What book are you presently reading?

Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell by Simon Heffer.

18. What book are you ashamed not to have read?

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot.

19. What is your favourite play?

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller; An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley; The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version by Terence Rattigan.

20. What are your favourite films?

The Magnificent Seven; Cinema Paradiso; Jean de Florette and its sequel Manon des Sources; Il Postino; Love Story; Schindler’s List; The Night Porter; Blow-Up; The Cruel Sea; Brief Encounter; A Man for All Seasons. 

21. What is the last film that made you cry?

Love Story.

22. What is your favourite TV box set?

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and adapted by John Mortimer.

23. What are your favourite pieces of music?

“Rigoletto” by Verdi and anything by Schubert, while Rachmaninoff’s “Third Piano Concerto” is the music that most cheers me up. At the gym, I listen to Dusty Springfield’s top hits, ABBA and Elton John.

24. What instrument do you wish you could play?

The piano.

25. If you could own one picture, what would it be?

The Penitent Peter by Guercino (hanging in the Scottish Academy).

26. What are your favourite names?

For women: Cressida; Antonia; Clementine; Cassandra.

For men: Oliver; Joseph; David; Raphael.

27. What gifts do you not possess?

Languages; an eye for a ball.

28. Where do you feel happiest?

In bed with Jane.

29. How would you like to die?

In control of my senses and surrounded by those who love me.

A staccato start in Gravesend as we wound our way out of the town. Heavy showers were punctuated  by an African sun so we dried quickly enough . We walked along miles of Thames Estuary,  in the past swarming with ships, today but a sad ship’s graveyard. Just imagine Turner’s tragic “The Fighting Temeraire”, being towed to the breaker’s yard by that smokey tug. We walked through acres of lumpy tundra: next Thursday we are told it’s a rifle range for the London Met. We won’t hang around.

I reflected on the joy generated last weekend when all 21 of the Benyon/ Hayns/ Sinclair  family, gathered in Bladon and in daughter Clare’s ancient Rectory in Iffley and Rosehill in Oxford. The family is so precious. A party of talk, games, even prayer and huge fun. What a privilege they all wanted to come.

So Long, Dear Friend

It would be remiss of me not to pay a tribute to cartoonist, Tony Husband, who died on Westminster Bridge in 2023. Tony enhanced ZANE’s work with great skill. He was a pleasure to work with. Tony was on top of his profession. We were lucky he agreed to work with us. He will be much missed. RIP.

We are fortunate in attracting the excellent Lee Fearnly as our new cartoonist.

The Art of Saying Goodbye

When our beloved daughter Clare left her role as Chaplain at Christ Church, I commented to a friend that one of the things I missed was the occasional parking spot in the heart of Oxford. 

“Of course,” he responded. “Life’s a series of getting things, then having to give them up!”

That observation triggered a memory from half a lifetime ago when I read The Road Less Travelled. The author, US psychiatrist Scott Peck, wrote about several things we must relinquish as we grow older. For starters, the follies of youth; and then, if we marry and truly grasp the soul-searing vows (not mere promises), we must give up much of our former independence. If we are granted children, we inevitably lose much of our social freedom, and because the ball of life bounces forwards, we must then let go of our children as they grow, forge their own paths, build relationships and love others. As we age, our looks – such as they ever were – wither with the passing years, and our sporting abilities abandon us. If I were to collapse whilst skiing now, I’d be unable to rise unaided – beached like a porpoise!

My shooting friends tell me that if balance falters, that’s it (on grounds of safety), while some of my golfing friends, pinched with arthritis, have had to give up the game altogether. We watch aghast as our work – surely, we were indispensable? – is taken up by the young and our “legacy” (if we ever had one) is shredded (just read Shelley’s “Ozymandias”). Speechless, we look on as debilitating illness or death fells our beloved friends and family, and finally, we begin to lose our health – and then, life itself.

And oh yes, I nearly forgot. Our society is marinated in sex, and for much of my life, I’ve felt as though I were handcuffed to a gibbering lunatic. Now the benign God has cast him into a deep cellar, from where, now and then, I still hear the echoes of his obscene yelling. But the days of early to bed and up with the cock are long gone. I’m resigned to the fact (relieved, even?) that the days of wine and roses are more or less over.

Life’s mighty tough and the adventure is best summed up by Churchill (you can see the quote in my last Christmas poetry book, page 6): “The journey has been well worth making – once.”       

The Great Escape

Some years ago, Jane and I moved from a much-loved house to a smaller one outside Oxford. We gave away many of our possessions – this reflects how we’ve changed as people. It’s not just that the children have left home, our outlook has changed too. What we want today differs from what we wanted in the early days of our marriage. Gone is the insistent need to be successful, make a fortune or be endlessly social. Now, less burdened by anxieties and responsibilities, we think of what makes us happy – relationships rather than grabbing things and parading status – and we buy less stuff. The idea of buying a new car to demonstrate our standing in society is risible (heck, it always was daft).

Our ability to ride horses has gone with the wind. And although I miss it keenly (though not the bills!), the fact that hunting – ­even trail hunting ­– is now illegal (mean-spirited and absurd) has made the choice rather easier. Perhaps visiting many of our paraplegic friends – and two tetraplegic ones, both now thankfully dead – helped us hang up our saddles, for it’s a mighty dangerous sport. So, some time ago, we disposed of our vast quantity of hunting gear – it was gutting.

Today, we busy ourselves with small, unimportant day-to-day things – family matters – but we try to do them well. 

Will our children really want my father’s pre-war diaries, his old papers and newspaper clips from India, his silver pots and ash trays, and his lamp too dim to read by? It’s a ridiculous trip down memory lane, misled by nostalgia and without purpose. And what will our children do with my army commission, or the certificate showing I passed an exam in theology? Or that piece of paper proving I jumped from an aeroplane 40 years ago? Are all these things some sort of defence against meaninglessness, proof to convince someone – who? – that Jane and I and our parents had a past? These scraps are a museum of our past lives, only dimly relevant to Jane and me – and wholly valueless to anyone else.   

We surround ourselves with briefly fashionable possessions and oppress ourselves by hanging onto them far longer than necessary. Then we burden our children with the miserable task of disposing of them.

Best deal with the clutter now. Brace yourself – what’s the address of the nearest tip?